Missions and values
St James is a school with an ambitious curriculum, disruption-free classrooms and great learning.
Our mission is to empower our students to use their education to become their best selves, to thrive in fulfilling careers and to lead great lives.
Our values are outlined in four pillars:
“We are so incredibly proud of our students and diverse community, we think this is part of what makes us special and so it felt completely natural to celebrate this by sharing some of the traditions from the many cultures represented within our school.”
Emily harper, Headteacher at St James
Our Four Pillars:
Uncompromising high standards
That means that we have a very academic curriculum and, for example, we have very high rates of students completing the suite of EBacc qualifications which is one of the reasons we were selected by the Department for Education to lead a modern foreign languages hub, one of only nine across the country. We’re also a DFE behaviour hub so that we can help other schools create a positive school culture.
Outward facing
We work with two DfE hubs to raise standards locally and nationally and engage in educational research. Our students are also outward facing. They raise money for charities, learn languages and volunteer locally because they know that to feel part of your community, you’ve got to first be part of your community.
Arts at the heart
For a lot of children, music, drama, our art exhibitions are what they truly love about coming to school. We also believe that whilst our academic curriculum teaches a knowledge of the world, the arts engender a knowledge of the self. It helps children explore who they are and who they want to be.
Kindness
We want to help our students grow into kind teenagers and kind adults. We teach our children, your children, to do the right thing, because it is the right thing, because that benefits them and their community – and because it feels good to just be a good human being.